Fwd: NYT Now: Your Thursday Briefing

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From: NYTimes.com <nytdirect@nytimes.com>
Date: Thu, Apr 23, 2015 at 12:16 PM
Subject: NYT Now: Your Thursday Briefing
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View in Browser | Add nytdirect@nytimes.com to your address book. Thursday, April 23, 2015 Thursday, April 23, 2015 nytnow.com » Enjoy this newsletter? Get continuous updates on today's most important stories with the NYT Now app for iPhone. Download now. The European Union may consider a military operation against human traffickers in Libya. Angelos Tzortzinis/AFP - Getty Images Your Thursday Briefing By VICTORIA SHANNON Good morning. Here's what you need to know: • Response to migrant crisis. European Union leaders in Brussels today may consider a military operation against human traffickers in Libya in an effort to halt the flow of migrants trying to reach Europe by sea. Prime Minister Matteo Renzi of Italy evoked the possibility of "targeted interventions" against smugglers based in Libya. An estimated 850 migrants died when a ship capsized last weekend. • On Capitol Hill. The Senate is scheduled to move forward on Loretta E. Lynch's nomination as attorney general today, with a confirmation vote expected in the afternoon. The House takes up a bill today to give President Obama special authority to finish negotiating a trade accord with Pacific Rim nations, after the Senate approved the "fast track" legislation on Wednesday. • Cyberwarfare plan. A new Pentagon cybersecurity strategy to be released today lays out publicly for the first time U.S. military plans to include cyberwarfare as an option in conflicts. Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter is in Silicon Valley today to seek help in ensuring that America's military has cutting-edge technologies. • Concussion case ends. N.F.L. players who have severe neurological disorders can get up to $5 million after a judge approved a lawsuit brought by more than 5,000 former players who accused the league of hiding the dangers of concussions from them. • Baltimore demonstrations. Protests are expected to continue across Baltimore today over the death of a man who sustained a spinal injury in police custody. What happened to the man inside the police van after he was arrested by Baltimore police officers has been a mystery since his death on Sunday, a week after his arrest. MARKETS • Wall Street stock futures are slightly lower. European shares are mostly down, while Asia mostly posted gains. • Petrobras, the indebted Brazilian oil company, said in its first report of audited results since August that a graft scandal cost it $2.1 billion. The net loss for 2014 was $7.2 billion. • Deutsche Bank declined to confirm that $1.6 billion in costs for legal proceedings, which will be deducted from first-quarter earnings, were related to an investigation into the London interbank offered rate. • Google's new wireless phone service, which mixes Wi-Fi and traditional cellular technology, is available only on its Nexus 6 phone, for now. • G.M., Google and Amazon are among high-profile earnings reports due today. NOTEWORTHY • Doctor on the defense. Dr. Mehmet Oz will air an episode of his syndicated talk show today that takes on the group of 10 doctors who complained about him to Columbia University, where he is on the faculty. The group suggested last week that Dr. Oz promotes "quack treatments" of weight loss supplements when there is no proof that they work. • Barry Bonds cleared. Fans of Barry Bonds are raising prospects for his entry to the Baseball Hall of Fame after his obstruction of justice conviction was reversed. Bonds hit a record 762 home runs in 22 years in the major leagues. He was investigated in baseball's illegal performance-enhancing drugs saga. • Musical notes. The three concerts billed as the Grateful Dead's final performances will be broadcast live via pay-per-view from Soldier Field in Chicago in July. And Shawn Mendes and his album "Handwritten" open at the top of Billboard's chart this week. At 16 years and 8 months, he is the youngest person to reach No. 1 since Justin Bieber in 2010. • A fight for tickets, too. Tickets to the Floyd Mayweather Jr.-Manny Pacquiao fight go on sale today, little more than a week before the Las Vegas match. At $1,500 each, only 500 tickets are being sold to the general public. • Synchronicity. Student actors in Las Vegas and Weston Super Mare, England, perform separately but together today in "Time Lapse," using a video link powered by two supercomputers to remove the trans-Atlantic delay. • The final four. Real Madrid and Juventus join Barcelona and Bayern Munich in the Champions League semifinals after their victories on Wednesday. They have all won European soccer's premier club competition more than once. • Happy summer. It's a national holiday in Iceland, the First Day of Summer, which has its roots in the Old Norse calendar, in which there were only two seasons, summer and winter. The day is observed with parades and gifts for children. Not that it will feel like summer. Reykjavik, the capital, is forecast to hit a high of 43 today. BACK STORY Today is World Book Day, and also — not coincidentally — the day we observe Shakespeare's birth and death. Other literary stars share the limelight this week. Wednesday was Vladimir Nabokov's birthday, and the day Miguel de Cervantes died. But Shakespeare gets most of the attention, with activities today through the weekend in his hometown, Stratford upon Avon, England, as well as in Australia, China and elsewhere. In New York, performances take place around Bryant Park, where visitors can write down their favorite Shakespeare quotations on a birthday banner. To fill out the literary theme, today is also the start of the Buenos Aires Book Fair, one of the largest in the Spanish speaking world, as well as National Adopt a Library Day in the U.S. And in Asia, the South Korean city of Incheon becomes "World Book Capital" for a year, as designated by Unesco. Your Morning Briefing is published weekdays at 6 a.m. Eastern and updated on the web all morning. What would you like to see here? Contact us at briefing@nytimes.com. Want to get the briefing by email? Here's the sign-up. ADVERTISEMENT FOLLOW NYTNOW @NYTNOW NYT Now app for iPhone Now the news keeps up with you Available on the App Store Get more NYTimes.com newsletters » | Sign Up for the Morning Briefing newsletter » ABOUT THIS EMAIL You received this message because you signed up for NYTimes.com's NYT Now newsletter. 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